A Weirdly Sentimental Update

I began already, but it was lost. How many new years can I fit into one human life? How many eons can I ignore in one youth? Perhaps I’m afraid I’m a fraud, and the only way to prove that to myself is to try and fail. If I don’t try, I think, I can’t fail. But the truth is if I don’t try I have already failed. Failed a gift that promised to storm once in my life. Failed a passion that gave me comfort and meaning when absolutely nothing else touched me. Failed a mind that promised to be sensitive and beautiful surrounded by stone walls or grassy plains. A mind that could and would follow horses. I'm talking about writing.

I find I have to remind myself that I am more than this bag of bones and muscle. I was afraid of this, and I don’t know why. Having chosen the most difficult career I could imagine, perhaps that’s why I felt I would be absolved from writing. But the following of one dream does not a negation of the others make. “When you choose something, you do not choose something else” is an apt phrase, but it is not very encompassing. When you choose something, you take responsibility for all of your other choices both conscious and unconscious. I have chosen to let this rot in myself. Now I am choosing to stop ignoring that fact.

“I can write” is not the same as “I’m a writer.” John, as usual, points out the obvious I’ve been unable to see.

Many hours later…

After a grueling 4.5 hour rehearsal with VdV for a show on Saturday (leaving Sunday for home) I have a vague idea of a costume I need to build for the pin-up section of the show, which is followed by paper dolls, monkeys, flaming swords, and strippers. In that order. I think.

Here’s the part of Shaun on Patrol: the extended version where I get…distracted. I wander off in my mind to do depraved things in the land of Rachel Pretends Shaun is Here. During Vau de Vire rehearsal when all the acrobats are slinging flaming whips of fire and swordfighting, I had to slap myself in the face. Twice.

I obsess over a song from Twilight and fantasize that someday Borders will carry book 3 again. Don't judge me. I go blues dancing and unleash myself on strangers in small, contained increments. Since it’s under the guise of social dancing, I usually get away with it. There are exceptions who call me out, but not many. And the ones who do still dance with me. Twice.

I feel almost sick with wanting, sick of myself for being unable to process and absorb the excess, and somehow also grateful that I can’t.

Before I know it the world will be stripped of its glittery holiday dressing and I’ll wish I’d been more involved. Well, the lovely Shredder’s



















(hoop artist extraordinaire, aerial and otherwise) birthday skating extravaganza is Tomorrow night, so I'll be showing up to a veritable brothel of wig-donning freaky coworkers to celebrate the fact that Shreddie exists. It is a very good thing to celebrate, trust me.

And now for something completely different:

Meet pretzel. This is what it's supposed to look like, modeled by the ineffable beloved herself:














And my sad little attempt:













You realize of course, this means war on gravity.
Or, rather, war with gravity's help. That is all.